Word Origin & History

late 14c., "gaping void," from Old French chaos (14c.) or directly from Latin chaos, from Greek khaos "abyss, that which gapes wide open, is vast and empty," from *khnwos, from PIE root *gheu- "to gape, yawn" (cf. Greek khaino "I yawn," Old English ginian, Old Norse ginnunga-gap; see yawn (v.)).

Meaning "utter confusion" (c.1600) is extended from theological use of chaos for "the void at the beginning of creation" in Vulgate version of Genesis (1530s in English). The Greek for "disorder" was tarakhe, however the use of chaos here was rooted in Hesiod ("Theogony"), who describes khaos as the primeval emptiness of the Universe, begetter of Erebus and Nyx ("Night"), and in Ovid ("Metamorphoses"), who opposes Khaos to Kosmos, "the ordered Universe." Meaning "orderless confusion" in human affairs is from c.1600. Chaos theory in the modern mathematical sense is attested from c.1977.

Example Sentences for chaos

My health, which had ever been feeble, was endangered by this state of chaos.

There all had been matter and chaos, here all was mind and a will to find a way out of confusion.

Here was a splendid end to chaos and blind wrestling with life.

He dared not stir, for all the world seemed to be dissolving into chaos.

A maid was there, and the furniture might have stood as a type of chaos.

A musician might extract some harmony from this chaos of noises, this jumble of sounds.

On she went, down, down, through a darkness that was chaos lit by lightning.

As I said at first, all things were originally a chaos in which there was no order or proportion.

The elements of this chaos were arranged by the Creator, and out of them he made the world.

Or, how could there have been motion in the chaos when as yet time was not?